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Hey Arnold!
Hey Arnold! is an American animated television series created by Craig Bartlett that aired on Nickelodeon from October 7, 1996 to June 8, 2004. The show centers on a fourth grader named Arnold, who lives with his grandparents in an inner-city boarding house. Episodes center on his experiences navigating big city life while dealing with the problems he and his friends encounter. Bartlett's idea for the show is based on a minor character named Arnold whom he created while working on Pee-wee's Playhouse. Arnold is also partially based on a young Stevie Wonder, living for the city in his formative years before he lost his sight. The executives enjoyed the character, and Bartlett completed the cast by drawing inspiration from people he grew up with in Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. Bartlett created the pilot episode in his living room in 1994, and official production began in 1995. The animators worked to transform Arnold from clay animation to cel animation, leading to the series' premiere. The show finished production in 2001 after 5 seasons and 100 episodes. Hey Arnold! received generally positive reviews, with many critics praising its character development, emotional storytelling and mature themes. Over the course of its eight-year run, the series aired 100 episodes. A feature film based on the series, Hey Arnold!: The Movie, was released in 2002. All five seasons have been released on DVD, and reruns currently air on the TeenNick block The Splat. As of 2016, a Hey Arnold! television movie, reportedly titled Hey Arnold: The Jungle Movie, has been greenlit for production. It is expected to pick up from where the series ended and will resolve unanswered plot lines of the story, including the whereabouts of Arnold's parents. Hey Arnold! stars nine-year-old Arnold (voiced by Toran Caudell; Phillip Van Dyke; Spencer Klein; Alex D. Linz and Mason Vale Cotton) and his neighborhood friends: Gerald (voiced by Jamil Walker Smith and Benjamin Flores Jr.), a street-smart character who generally serves as the leader of the group, and Helga (Francesca Smith), a girl who bullies Arnold in order to hide the fact that she is in love with him. Bartlett drew inspiration from people he grew up with when creating the characters for the show. Arnold lives with his eccentric but loving paternal grandparents, Phil (Dan Castellaneta) and Gertrude (Tress MacNeille), proprietors of the Sunset Arms boarding house, in the fictional city of Hillwood. In each episode, he often helps a schoolmate or boarding home tenant solve a personal problem, or encounters a predicament of his own. Many episodes involve urban legends usually told by Gerald, such as superheroes or headless horsemen. Other characters include students and faculty at P.S. 118, Arnold's school, and citizens of Hillwood. Certain episodes focus on the lives of supporting characters, such as the tenants of the boarding house that Arnold's grandparents own. Hey Arnold! takes place in the fictional American city of Hillwood. While its geographic location is never revealed outright, some episodes suggest that the city is located in Washington State. Bartlett described the city as "an amalgam of large northern cities I have loved, including Seattle (my hometown), Portland (where I went to art school) and Brooklyn (the bridge, the brownstones, the subway)". Bartlett, having grown up in Seattle, based many of the show's events on his own experience growing up in the city. Evan Levine of the Houston Chronicle commented on the series' "backdrop of dark streets, nighttime adventures and rundown buildings, all seen from a child's point of view". Cast Category:Nickelodeon Category:Cartoons